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17/11/2006 | Analysis: Gates will change U.S. strategy

Martin Sieff

It took six years, an out of control war in Iraq and a generational change in control in the U.S. Congress to do it, but President George W. Bush has finally switched course on his global strategy.

 

The president's announcement Nov. 8 that he was finally replacing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with former CIA Director Robert Gates marks a seismic shift in the balance of power in Washington.

For the first time, the old Republican internationalists and cautious pragmatists who dominated the administration of President George Herbert Walker Bush, the current president's father, are taking real power in the government of the old president's son.

Ever since the current President Bush scraped into the presidency with less than a 600 vote plurality in the state of Florida in the 2000 cliffhanger of a presidential election, the U.S. media has been filled with reports that the president and his top team were either far more moderate and pragmatic than they in fact were, or that they had seen the errors of their ways and were dramatically shifting course.

None of it was true. In the president's first term of office, Secretary of State Colin Powell, the last figure to uphold the tradition of Republican internationalism inherited from Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and the first President Bush, was repeatedly over-ruled and outflanked by the president and his favored top team of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice repeatedly sided with the Cheney-Rumsfeld juggernaut, isolating and outflanking Powell.

In the president's second term, Rice succeeded Powell and enjoyed the president's confidence far more than her predecessor did. But she never stood up to or defied Cheney and Rumsfeld on any key issue. European and Middle East Arab policymakers appreciated her relative moderation and willingness to listen to and respect their concerns. But around the world there was still a strong sense that Rice could not prevail upon the president to rein in Rumsfeld, who continued to run the U.S. Department of Defense as his private fiefdom.

The president remained loyal to his Rummy almost to the bitter end. As late as Nov. 1, Bush publicly vowed that he would keep Rumsfeld in the Pentagon through his second term, which would have made Rumsfeld by a wide margin the longest-serving secretary of defense in U.S. history.

However, within 24 hours of the president's Republican Party losing control of both houses of Congress to the opposition Democrats in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Rumsfeld was gone. And the president named as his successor one of his father's most respected and experienced senior officials, former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates.

Gates remains to this day a confidante and close personal friend and professional colleague of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who has been co-chairing an Iraq Study Group with former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton to come up with new directions to deal with the out of control chaos and escalating sectarian civil war that Iraq became on Rumsfeld's watch.

Rumsfeld's fall removes the most powerful figure in the George W. Bush administration over the past six years. Rumsfeld ran the largest, most expansive and most manpower-extensive department of the U.S. government. He wielded more direct power than any other official in government and was not shy about doing it. With the possible exception of his fellow micro-manager, Robert McNamara, who plunged the U.S. Army deep into the quagmire of Vietnam 40 years ago and then could not get it out, Rumsfeld was easily the most hands-on, intrusive, confident, controversial and hard-charging secretary of defense, or SecDef, the U.S. armed forces have ever had.

But with Rumsfeld gone, Cheney, who unlike Rumsfeld or Rice does not directly run any of the major institutions of the federal government, has been turned overnight into a marginalized figure on the foreign policy deliberations of the administration.

As long as Rumsfeld was there, Cheney could count on the two of them teaming up to convince the president with their greater age and vastly greater experience over the decades in policymaking on national security issues. And he could rest assured that whatever the two of them wanted done, Rumsfeld would move quickly to implement in the Pentagon that he ran with an iron hand.

But now Rumsfeld has been replaced with Gates, who looks virtually certain to strengthen Rice's clear preference for the use of diplomacy over rapid resort to military force. Gates also shares Rice's aversion to unilateral policymaking without bringing significant numbers of America's traditional allies around the world on board.

Gates is also on the record as expressing his conviction that the United States needs to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process. That idea was anathema to both Rumsfeld and Cheney, but Rice has indicated she is more sympathetic to it.

Similarly, when traditionally pro-American Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt last year tried to interest Bush in phasing out U.S. military forces in Iraq and replacing them with military contingents from Arab League nations, the Cheney-Rumsfeld team made sure the idea was a dead duck before it could get off the ground. Gates is far more likely to welcome such initiatives from allies and at least make sure they get serious consideration, and to bring Rice along with him.

Remaining hard-line hawks in the administration, like U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, will now find that they are dangling on unexpected long and fragile branches. Cheney's standing with the president is much reduced, and Rumsfeld is no longer there to add his relentless determination and support.

The last stronghold remaining to the old hard-line hawks is the National Security Council, where Cheney's influence still runs strong. The NSC is nominally under the control of Stephen Hadley, but the real driving force on it is neo-conservative and super-hawk Elliot Abrams.

However, everywhere else, a new wind is blowing through the corridors of power in Washington.

UPI (Estados Unidos)

 



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